Monday, December 10, 2012

Take Christmas out of December

There’s
something about Christmas that seems to bring out the worst some people, even
as most folks seem happier, bathed in the positive spirit of the month.Their counterparts see this as a time to
impose their religious beliefs on everyone else in a most-un-Christian-like
manner.

They
shrilly complain that people are attacking Christmas because businesses
increasingly require their employees to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry
Christmas.”There was anger because
Rhode Island labeled its state tree a “holiday” tree rather a Christmas tree –
as if any other religion decorates trees this time of year.

They
are furious that atheists objected when public school classes were taken to see
the traditional Charlie Brown Christmas show.Cities have been forced to remove a creche, take down other decorations
and stop Christmas festivals.

Buchanan

Conservative
commentator Pat Buchanan (left) has protested these sporadic efforts: "What we are
witnessing here [with the secularization of Christmas] are hate crimes against
Christianity -- the manifestations, the symptoms of a sickness of the soul, a
disease a Vatican diplomat correctly calls Christianophobia," the fear and
loathing of all things Christian, coupled with a fanatic will to expunge from
the public life of the West all reminders that ours was once a Christian
civilization and America once a Christian country."

The
late Rev. Jerry Falwell added:“... spiritual Grinches in our nation are accelerating their war against
Christmas as never before."

Emperor Augustus

That’s,
of course, nonsense.What’s happening is
a burst of common courtesy.

Not
everyone believes in or cares about a holiday based on the birth of a baby
about 2,000 years ago.Not even early
Christian leaders did.Lay people wanted
the holiday, just as they celebrated the birth of a Roman emperor.That is why Church leaders opposed it.They noted there were (and still aren’t) any birthday
celebrations for Abraham or Moses.In their day, only the
birthdays of Roman emperors were turned into public festivals, but not birthdays of
religious icons.

The Christian forefather
eventually lost out to public opinion.Except for a brief effort by Puritans in the mid-1600s, we’ve been
inundated with Christmas ever since.

Judah Maccabee

However,
there are other holidays this time of year, including the Jewish Hanukkah and
the African-American Kwanzaa.Hanukkah
celebrates a military victory by a ragtag Jewish army initially led Judah Maccabee against the more professional
Syrians in 165 BCE and the capture of the Temple.Kwanzaa was created by an American professor hoping
to “reaffirm the communitarian vision and values of African culture and to
contribute to its restoration among African peoples in the Diaspora, beginning
with Africans in America and expanding to include the world African community,
“ according to the holiday’s official website.

Neither
resemble Christmas in anyway.Neither
gets the same attention.In fact,
Hanukkah probably would have vanished from the calendar if Christmas hadn’t
started up.How long would anyone celebrate
a military victory, especially when it involves the Temple, which disappeared
in 70 CE?

Interest
in Kwanzaa is fading, especially in recent years as African-Americans increasingly
merge with the larger society.

Nevertheless,
followers of both holidays shouldn’t have to feel suffocated by Christmas.No one should, especially in a society where
Christianity is increasing losing its grip.Recently surveys indicate that Americans who are professed Christians
has dropped to 72 percent in 2012.A decade
ago, the number was closer to 90 percent.

At
the same time, the number of people with no religious affiliation or who are
atheists has risen dramatically and now tops 20 percent of the population.

“Happy
No Holidays” would probably work for them.But, even “Happy Holidays” is better than the religion-oriented “Merry
Christmas.”

Sharon Prudhomme

Still,
people like Sharon Prudhomme, who owns a Pennsylvania restaurant, don’t get
it.She offers a discount to
church-goers who bring in a flyer or bulletin from their church.She was successfully sued by the Freedom from
Religion Foundation (FFRF), an atheist group founded by a once-fundamentalist
Christian.FFRF wants everyone eligible
for the discount.

Prudhomme
considers the whole dispute ridiculous.In
fact, she insisted, any bulletin from any church would do, even one from a
non-Christian facility.

“To me, a mosque is a church; a
[Jewish] temple is a church,” she said. “I consider the word to just mean a
place where someone goes to honor their religion.”

Except, it’s not.

The word “church” comes from Old
English and means “assemble,” which is ecumenical enough.However, it has become accepted as the term
for a Christian building.That’s why the
liberal Unitarians, for example, call their place a society and shun the name "church." The UU Church of West Volusia, based in DeLand, Florida, dropped the word "society" only after finding the children of members were being harassed for not being members of a "church." Jews call their meeting place a synagogue,
which comes from the Greek and means meeting place.Muslims have a mosque and so on.

Calling anything a church
inherently labels it Christian.

Words do matter. So do physical
objects.

Wreaths were originally pagan images.

Wreaths, carols and the like are
also clearly and completely Christian.Even
if they are derived from non-Christian sources, including pagan and Jewish,
they are exclusive property of one belief.

Everyone has the right to express
his religious views.That’s guaranteed
under the U.S. Constitution.No one,
however, has the right to impose that belief on others.Carols blaring in almost every store, tax
dollars spent on Christmas decorations and other Christian-oriented activities
are blatant attempts to impose one religion on everyone.

Objecting to that is not an attack
on Christmas. Instead, it represents support for freedom
of religion and from religion in a country that never was and is not now
Christian.

Long-time
religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious
history.He also speaks at various
religious organizations throughout Florida.You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.He is the author of the famed Unauthorized
Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel
Writers Get Their Information; Noel:
The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols;and Dummies Guide to Comparative
Religion.His books are available on Amazon.com,
Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.He can also be followed on Twitter.

You
can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at
http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

About Me

During his career, Bill has been a newspaper reporter, magazine writer/editor, advertising copywriter and writer/editor of NASCAR programs, among other jobs. He has won three international awards for stories and programs while working for International Speedway Corp. and was named 2000 Florida Feature Writer of the Year.
He has published four books to date and his writing has appeared in hundreds of local, regional, state and national publications.